As Democrats won gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey on Tuesday, exit polls showed there was an obvious adverse response to President Donald Trump, Politico reports.
Most of the voters in these states disapproved of Trump’s performance as president and many claimed they voted just to oppose him. President Trump is not the first one to lose the governors races in these two states in the first year of his term. Other presidents’ parties, including Barack Obama’s, George W. Bush’s and Bill Clinton’s, also lost these races in the first year of the election.
The results from Tuesday night cast doubts on GOP majority in both the House and Senate. In Virginia, Trump’s approval rating was 40 percent, while 57 percent of all voters disapproved of the job he is doing as president. Democrat Ralph Northam beat the Republican candidate Ed Gillespie 87-11 percent. Northam won 97 percent of the votes of those who said they voted just to oppose the president.
In 2009, former President Barack Obama’s approval rating was much higher, with 48 percent of voters expressing their approval of his presidential performance.
In New Jersey, the poll numbers were worse for President Trump, with only 36 percent approval rating. Of the other 63 percent, 54 percent of voters strongly disapprove. About 28 percent of voters there said they were voting to oppose the president and 96 percent of them voted for Phil Murphy. In comparison, Obama had a 57 percent approval rating in New Jersey in 2009.
Similarly to last year’s presidential election, 51 percent of white educated voters from Virginia’s suburbs voted for Northam, who beat Gillespie by a small margin. These results may prove to be dangerous to Republican House and Senate majorities.
If suburbs around cities like Philadelphia, Miami, Tampa, Phoenix, and Houston – which are vital to the party keeping its majority – vote similarly, Republicans will definitely lose majorities in both the House and Senate. Following the results of his approval rating, Trump tweeted that the reason Gillespie lost was that he did not “embrace” what Trump stands for.
“Don’t forget, Republicans won 4 out of 4 House seats, and with the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before!” said the president’s tweet.
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